1. Field of the Invention
The present Invention concerns a plug-opening device For a specimen container containing blood or like other specimen and tightly sealed with a plug, wherein the plug is for example, made of rubber.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A specimen, such as blood, sampled from a human body is sealed in a container such as a test tube, and sampling is conducted upon inspection by removing the plug out of the container.
In recent years, specimens have been handled very carefully for preventing the spread of infectious diseases. In a known plug-opening device for contactless treating of specimens, a rigid rod is attached to a top end of a cylindrical rod that reciprocates forward and backward and a top end of a plug-opening member is caused to abut obliquely and upwardly against the circumferential side of a plug of a specimen container for extracting the plug.
However, since the conventional device for opening the plug of this kind has a structure for opening the plug by urging the top end of a rigid rod, the rod is fully extended in its opening-stroke before the plug is opened completely, or the rod is detached from the plug, so that the specimen container not yet opened is forwarded in its unopened state to a sampling line. For preventing this, the plug-opening operation has to be conducted over and over, but this option is extremely inefficient.